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BlackSky, the geospatial intelligence service of Spaceflight Industries, today announced the first of its next generation of small Earth observation satellites is complete, qualified, and awaiting launch. This spacecraft, called Global-1, is the first of four smallsats that are scheduled to launch in in the next year on both US and foreign launch vehicles.

The Global series of spacecraft builds on the success of BlackSky’s initial technology demonstration spacecraft, called Pathfinder, which was launched in September 2016. The Global spacecraft provides 1-meter resolution and features improved image quality, geolocation accuracy, and on-orbit lifetime. The spacecraft is complemented by an enhanced ground system to minimize the latency between image tasking and receipt.

“The Global satellites are an important step forward for the satellite industry,” said Nick Merski, vice president of space operations at Spaceflight Industries. “We are continuing to advance the boundaries of what can be achieved in terms of price point, capability and form factor, and these improvements ultimately help to make space more accessible for a broader set of business applications.”

BlackSky’s Global smallsats will join the virtual constellation of commercial imaging satellites accessible through the BlackSky geospatial platform. Within the platform, users can access BlackSky Spectra’s on-demand imagery service to search, purchase, task, and download visual imagery and multi-spectral data from a global collection network. They can also subscribe to BlackSky Events, the platform’s global event monitoring service that fuses news, social media, industry data services, and physical sensor networks to provide early warning and insights on risks, threats, and opportunities that can impact their business. The platform is currently in use by several large government and commercial organizations to actively monitor global assets.

“This is an important milestone for Spaceflight Industries and for our BlackSky geospatial information business,” said Jason Andrews, chairman and CEO of Spaceflight Industries. “Qualifying the Global generation of spacecraft paves the way for mass production and launch of our full constellation, as well as achieving our vision of deploying a high revisit rate constellation in the near future.”

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The Copernicus Marine Service is pleased to announce the launch of a new ocean information product, the Ocean Monitoring Indicators (OMIs). OMIs are free downloadable data sets covering the past 25 years of the key variables used to monitor the oceanic trends in line with climate change, including ocean warming, sea level rise and melting of sea ice. This free and open ocean information allows users to track the vital health signs of the ocean over the past quarter of a century.

Knowing how much heat is stored in the ocean, how fast the sea levels are rising and sea ice is melting, is essential to understanding the current state and changes in the ocean and climate. This information is critical for assessing and confronting oceanic and atmospheric changes associated with global warming and they can be used by scientists, decision-makers, environmental agencies, the general public, and in measuring our responses to environmental directives. The OMIs expand the Copernicus Marine Service portfolio to provide not only ocean data products but also key reference information on the state of the ocean.

The Ocean Monitoring Indicators are free and available on the Copernicus Marine Service website as digital files (click here). They include observations starting in 1993, hindcast and forecast data of global and regional ocean heat content, the global mean and regional sea level, and the Antarctic and Arctic sea ice extent (the Arctic time series is from 1979 onwards). These three variables are extracted from the Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Report because they represent the oceanic symptoms of a heated planet. These trends were found to be of particular importance in the Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Report, an annual peer-reviewed publication that provides scientific context and a thorough analysis on the state of the ocean, trends, and severe/notable events (the 2018 report will be published in the coming months). The OMI products were developed through a long process of scientific analysis and validation, with the consensus of around 100 Copernicus Marine Service scientific experts after their review. The OMIs were created through a strong collaboration with other Copernicus services such as the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Following various Earth observation initiatives like those of NASA and NOAA in the USA, the Copernicus Marine Service independently produced the OMIs, as a part of the European Union’s Copernicus Programme, the world’s single largest Earth observation programme. The data is based on historical satellite and in situ observations of the ocean and sea ice as well as numerical ocean models.

The key findings of the Copernicus Marine Service OMIs and Ocean State Report:

Global mean sea level rise amounts to 3.4 millimeters per year from 1993 to 2016 (with an uncertainty of ±0.5mm/year). About 30% of global sea level rise can be attributed to ocean thermal expansion due to the ocean warming.

What does this mean for us? Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of sea water as it warms. When water is heated it expands, this is called thermal expansion, a phenomena that we are seeing more of as the ocean consistently warms over the past decades. Sea level rise can seriously effect human populations in coastal and island regions and natural environments like marine ecosystems. The impacts can be wide-ranging and can include: increased coastal erosion, higher storm-surge flooding, inhibition of primary production processes, more extensive coastal inundation, changes in surface water quality and groundwater characteristics, increased loss of property and coastal habitats, increased flood risk and potential loss of life, loss of non-monetary resources and value, impact on agriculture and aquaculture through decline in soil and water quality, loss of tourism, recreation, and transportation functions.

The upper global ocean has continuously warmed since 1993 at a rate of 0.8 ±0.1 Watts per meters squared (with an uncertainty of ±0.1 watts/m2). More than 40% of this subsurface warming can be attributed to heat storage in the 700-2000m depth layer.

What does this mean for us? Variations in the ocean heat content can induce changes in ocean stratification, currents, sea ice and ice shelfs. A warming ocean causes thermal expansion (increasing sea level rise) and thermal stress that, for example, contributes to coral bleaching and infectious disease. A warming ocean can also cause altered ocean currents leading to changes in atmosphere and sea connectivity and temperature exchange. It is important to monitor the ocean’s ability to store and exchange heat with the atmosphere, as it in turn influences the Earth’s climate and atmospheric patterns from a local to global scale. One such example is the naturally occurring heat exchanges during El Nino Southern Oscillations (ENSO) events.

Following a prominent sea ice decrease in the Antarctic Ocean in 2016, both the Antarctic and the Arctic oceans are currently at record lows in terms of sea ice extent. Since 1993 in the Arctic Ocean, the sea ice extent has decreased significantly at an annual rate of -0.78*106 km2 per decade. Ten of the lowest Arctic summer sea ice extent values took place in the last ten years. Since 1993 in the Antarctic Ocean, the annual sea ice extent has slightly increased at a rate of 0.21*106 km2 per decade. However, in the last quarter of 2016, there was a record-setting rapid loss of Antarctic ice starting in early September.

What does this mean for us? Variations in sea ice cover can induce changes in ocean stratification, in global and regional sea level rates, and modify the key role played by the cold poles in the Earth engine. This can include effects on thermal convections and the climate sea interactions. There can be many consequences to melting Arctic ice caps, from shifts in the ecosystem to changing human behaviors, such as a likely increase in boat traffic through the Arctic Ocean. During warm years when there is early sea ice retreat, there can be an impact on the annual net oceanic primary production through phytoplankton blooms. It can also impact wildlife. Polar bears, for instance, have to find alternative food sources because of scarcities caused by the Arctic sea ice that melts earlier and freezes later each year.

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PlanetObserver has released the most up-to-date global mosaic processed with recent and cloud-free satellite imagery.

With an unmatched 10 meter resolution at the global scale, PlanetSAT Global #2018 mosaic provides accurate geographic information for any part of the world. Users benefit from a seamless view of the Earth in high quality natural colors for an enhanced visual experience.

PlanetObserver has selected best available multi-source data to process version #2018 of PlanetSAT Global mosaic. Very recent Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 meter resolution is used to update all largest urban areas across the world and all capital cities. Continents are updated with new Landsat 8 imagery. All our imagery is color-corrected, optimized and ready-to-use in different professional formats.

PlanetSAT Global #2018 mosaic will continue to bring great value to our users across different industries. The mosaic is easy to use in many military, commercial and consumer applications for visualization and simulation solutions, aircraft simulators, geo-intelligence solutions, web-mapping apps, to broadcast and weather graphics systems.

Laurent Masselot, CEO of PlanetObserver, said that with PlanetSAT Global Version #2018, the company offers a completely improved product with higher spatial resolution and more recent imagery. Plus, users save time with ready-to-use imagery, easy to implement in their solutions.

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Mapping a continent’s ecosystem is a complex business — and one for which disparate methodologies have been employed across Australian jurisdictions — until now.

The new national maps direct comparison of selected indicators across jurisdictions for the first time.

The Terrestrial Ecosytem Research Network (TERN) and the University of Adelaide have published the first maps of Australia’s ecosystem to be consistent with international standards.

Ecosystem maps are a critical tool for land managers, informing management strategies for climate change mitigation, conservation, development planning and assessments of ecosystem services.

Approaches differ nation to nation, and between Australian states and territories, making it incredibly difficult to align land management strategies or even assess ecosystem health in one area relative to another that has been measured and mapped using a different set of indicators and methodologies.

TERN and the University of Adelaide have addressed this information gap with a new set of national maps that capture three major factors driving ecosystem formation—macroclimate, lithology and landform, with multiple spatial indicators for each.

Vegetation structure has also been mapped and combined with the three indicators of ecosystem formation to produce ‘ecological facets’—distinctive and unique ecological units.

This work is part of a much bigger global project led by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a consortium of over 100 nations, including Australia, that seek to promote earth observation for for solving some of society’s most difficult problems.

“The ultimate goal of this work was the production of the ecological facets digital map,” said Dr. Ken Clarke of the University of Adelaide.

“These ecological facets allow for a better understanding of the current range of biophysical variation within and across Australian ecosystems. We anticipate, however, that for many applications the precursor spatial indicators will be more useful by themselves,” he said.

“While this is not the officially approved approach for Australia, it does build on IBRA [Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia] and NVIS [National Vegetation Information System] data provided by the Australia Government Department of Environment and Energy [DoEE].”

You can read the report on the GEOSS ecosystem mapping project [PDF] and access the data layers on ecosystem formation (macroclimate, lithology and landform), vegetation structure and ecological facets at TERN’s Landscape Assessment capability.

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Marking the International Day of Forests, this Copernicus Sentinel-2 false-color image shows an area of Bolivia that was once covered by trees but has now been cleared for resettlement and agriculture.

Photo Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA

Bolivia’s city of Santa Cruz can be seen at the mid-left. One of the fastest-growing cities in the world, this important commercial center lies on the Pirai River in the tropical lowlands of eastern Bolivia. To the east of the city, and particularly east of the Guapay River, or the Río Grande, a huge patchwork of agricultural fields can be seen. Back in the 1960s, this was an area of largely inaccessible and thick Amazon forest. However, as an area of relatively flat lowland with abundant rainfall, it is suited to farming.

As part of a drive to develop and improve the economy, there has been rapid deforestation since the 1980s to accommodate programs to resettle people from the Andean high plains and develop the area for agriculture, particularly for soybean production. This has resulted in the region being transformed from dense forest into a large mosaic of fields. As well as countless rectangular fields, radial features can be seen where individual farmers have worked outwards from a central hub of communal land.
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Researchers at the University of Nottingham who developed groundbreaking technology which was used to create the first country-wide land motion map of Scotland, have scored another first by creating a new UK-wide ground motion map.

Using thousands of satellite radar images, the technology was applied under license by Geomatic Ventures Limited (GVL), an innovative University spin-out company, to create a complete land motion map of the UK as a natural progression from the first country-wide map of ground motion in Scotland.

The new UK-wide map covers a two-year period from 2015 to 2017 and was created using an Intermittent Small Baseline Subset (ISBAS) analysis, a novel satellite remote sensing data processing algorithm. It offers the most detailed look ever at the UK’s shifting topography and highlights areas of hazards due to coal mining, soil compaction, landslides, coastal erosion, landfill subsidence and tunnelling for the London Underground.

This unique ground motion surveying system offers a host of advantages. It can obtain measurements over all urban and rural areas and therefore provides a full picture of the moving UK land surface, which is of significant interest to policymakers and a wide range of industries. These include onshore oil and gas, civil engineering, insurance, mining and carbon trading.

Dr. Stephen Grebby, Assistant Professor in Earth Observation, explained, “With the new map we are able to better understand how the entire UK landscape is being affected by various natural and anthropogenic processes. Whilst providing us with detailed information to study the individual mechanisms of these processes, the technique also offers a means of identifying and mitigating any potential risk that these may also pose to infrastructure, society and the environment.”

Dr. John Kupiec, Innovation Manager at the Environment Agency commented, “The Environment Agency has supported GVL in this innovative development and is delighted to see the product released as an online interactive map. The Environment Agency and other government and public sector organisations will be able to make use of the rich information for a variety of applications in monitoring both the natural and built environments for the benefit of people and to promote sustainable development.”

Large civil engineering projects such as the works at Kennington Park, London, part of the Northern Line Extension, lie at the heart of a large subsidence bowl (red/brown on the map) measuring more than 500m across, just east of the Oval. This is most likely due to the sinking of a shaft which was completed in November 2017. The map also shows that parts of the proposed HS2 route go through some of the most dynamic areas of coal mining subsidence in England.

Coal mining areas contain large regions of surface rebound (uplift – blue on the map) which is a common occurrence as the underground workings flood after closure, but there are also many instances of collapsing mines deep underground that may still lead to surface subsidence (red/brown on the map) decades after closure. The examples of such effects can be seen extensively over former coalfields such as Leigh, Greater Manchester; North Nottinghamshire; South Yorkshire; Stoke-on-Trent; and Midlothian. Even though the map shows ground movement in these and other areas, there is very little cause for concern, as the rates are typically very low (only a few millimetres per year) and would be barely noticeable in most cases.

The new map easily identifies subsiding areas (in red/brown) in Scotland’s Flow Country, which is the largest blanket bog in Europe and the largest single terrestrial carbon store in the UK, thus ensuring that the extent of the damage can be assessed. This key information can contribute towards international reports on emissions which are submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union. It also provides useful evidence on the success of restoration campaigns which are important for reporting on carbon sequestration.

Dr. Andy Sowter, Chief Technical Officer of GVL said, “This is truly the first of its kind. No one has ever mapped land motion across the whole of the UK quite like this before, encompassing the complete rural and urban landscape, and all from a satellite orbiting 800km above us. This unique image has revealed a dynamic, shifting, collapsing landscape dominated by unnatural, man-made activities such as our heritage in coal mining, agricultural practices and peatland management. It has implications for a whole range of industrial and governmental bodies including those in energy, infrastructure, environmental management and climate change but also demonstrates that a low-cost, operational solution to the monitoring of land surface dynamics at this scale is possible.”

About the UK-wide land motion map

The map was produced from over 8TB of radar data (more than 2000 images) acquired over two years by the Sentinel-1 satellite mission, which is part of the European Union’s Copernicus programme. Sentinel-1 data was downloaded for free from the European Space Agency website. The data was analysed using the novel (patent pending) ISBAS Interferometric SAR (InSAR) method developed by the University of Nottingham and exclusively licensed to GVL, which is uniquely able to survey both rural and urban areas. The images were processed by GVL.

About the ISBAS method

The Intermittent Small Baseline Subset (ISBAS) method was first tested in 2012 in collaboration with the British Geological Survey. In 2014, it was the overall winner of the prestigious Copernicus Masters Competition, also known as the ‘Space Oscars,’ awarded by the European Union and the European Space Agency. Since then it has been fully validated and is the subject of a growing number of high-ranking peer-reviewed journals. It is also the subject of a patent application by the University of Nottingham.

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A new ECOPOTENTIAL service has been released! The section “Protected Areas from Space” has been added to the ECOPOTENTIAL website. It consists of a web map server showing and delivering all satellite data and metadata produced within the project. Data can be displayed, analysed and directly downloaded in several GIS formats.

Have a look at the maps!

This new service is available at the following link

ECOPOTENTIAL has landed at the European Parliament in Brussels! From 8 to 12 January 2018, the Place du Luxembourg building hosted the exhibition “SPACED: Using Earth Observations to Protect Natural Landscapes”.

Through the 26 exposed panels it has been possible to know more about the protected areas studied in the project, among the most beautiful in Europe and in the world, and the research activities carried out by the project partners. Beautiful pictures and satellite images, accompanied by short texts, illustrated how researchers and managers of protected areas are working together to study mountain, arid, coastal and marine ecosystems.

The panels of the exhibition illustrate in simple language the scientific work, and in particular the use that is made of satellite data, but also the beauty of the places, making immediately grasp the importance of scientific research aimed at improving the conservation of our natural environments.

After the European Parliament, the exhibition has been hosted again in Bruxelles at the Council of the Regions during the month of February.

We are evaluating other opportunities to let the exhibition travel in other locations in Europe and translate it also in other languages. Stay tuned for further developments! Take a look at the photo gallery: click here and read the article on the EASME Website.

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A South African manufactured nanosatellite orbiting Earth since May last year is doing so well that it has generated sales of some of its sub-systems on the international satellite market.

The satellite called nSight-1 is a product of the Somerset West-based SCS Aerospace Group (SCSAG), Africa’s largest privately-owned group of satellite design and manufacturing companies with more than 25 years of experience in this domain. It was launched from the International Space Station during May last year with 28 other satellites as part of the European Space Agency’s QB50 project which collects research data from the earth’s lower thermosphere.

“We are delighted and extremely proud of the performance of our satellite nSight-1. It is in a stable and healthy state and the various on-board payloads are working well and have resulted in a number of major sub-systems sales to international clients,” says Francois Denner, Managing Director of the SCS Aerospace Group.

“The success of nSight-1 certainly strengthens our position to play a leading role in forging a new satellite business cluster in the South African economic sector. Our group now has the ability to manufacture up to 80% of small satellite components locally. We are proudly South African,” says Denner.

The three companies in the SCS Aerospace Group which are directly involved in providing commercial satellite solutions are Space Advisory Company SAC their satellite programme and systems consulting and engineering house; SCS Space which provides satellite mission solutions as well as satellite systems; and NewSpace Systems which develops and manufactures high-quality space components and sub-systems. The group employs some 90 highly trained satellite specialists such as electronic, systems, software and mechanical engineers.

According to Hendrik Burger, CEO for SCS Space, the primary contractor for the nSight-1 nanosatellite, the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) used on board is one of the most advanced used in a satellite this size. This is another South African product designed and manufactured by CubeSpace (www.cubespace.co.za). It has given the satellite a high degree of pointing accuracy to orientate in its orbit some 400km above Earth. They are now looking at extending the expected orbit lifetime of the satellite from 18 to 24 months due to its low drag, specific mass and orientation control.

The milestone achievements for their satellite so far are the following:

· Their primary science payload (FIPEX) to feed regular data for thermosphere analysis to the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics is working well by providing double the contracted data volume;

· The Gravity Wave Experiment is producing measurement data that is being processed by Mr. Philip Wagner (the South African creator of the experiment);

· Ongoing radiation impact detection results are being monitored by the Radiation Experiment and delivered to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) for interpretation;

· Their SCS Gecko Multispectral Imager has been seamlessly producing high-quality pictures that are made freely available. The Space Advisory Company was awarded with the “Best Innovation Concept for a medium enterprise” award for the Gecko imager development during the 2017 Da Vinci Top Technology (TT100) Awards, South Africa’s foremost technology innovation awards;

· The Grabouw-based ground station that controls the satellite is autonomously operating and will in the future form part of an international network of satellite ground stations servicing the ever-growing need by Lower Earth Orbit satellites.

“The nSight-1 mission demonstrates the ability of the SCSAG to leverage the capabilities in the South African space industry cluster. Thank you to all the South African project partners including SCS Space, Space Advisory Company, NewSpace Systems, Pinkmatter Solutions, the Department of Trade and Industry, Stellenbosch University, CubeSpace, Denel Spaceteq, DeltaV Aerospace, Simera Technology Group, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and the Amateur Radio Society, who made this possible,” Denner concluded.

There has been a significant growth in the availability of satellite data in recent years, providing access to information on air quality, soil composition, ocean currents, and seismic activity.

Satellite images offer a 3D view of the earth and a close to real time analysis.

Experts argue that sustainable agriculture and food security processes are limited by a lack of information. Satellite data fills this gap while also offering the potential to map deforestation, urbanisation and flooding.

Satellite technologies provide a new solution to the world’s rapidly increasing population and food demands.

Nagaraja Rao Harshadeep, lead environmental specialist and global lead for watersheds at the World Bank commented:

“There’s an opportunity to try and do things in a way we couldn’t even dream of just a few years ago. A real paradigm shift is happening in terms of the kinds of activities that we can support now using a lot of these new technologies.”

For agriculture, satellite technology could be critical, farmers and agricultural organisations will be able to make informed decisions based on historic patterns and a better understanding of present day issues.

A new satellite technology has been launched today that harnesses the latest earth observation and satellite technology to help Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Tanzania address food security, agriculture issues, deforestation and water access.

The ‘African Regional Data Cube’ was developed by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS) alongside the Group on Earth Observations, Amazon Web Services and Strathmore University in Kenya.

The Deputy President of Kenya, H.E William Ruto said Kenya will use the data cube to inform food security processes, a pillar of its ‘Big Four’ priorities alongside manufacturing, healthcare and affordable housing.

Thanks to the data cube, the government will gain a better understanding of crop distribution, seasonality and use of agricultural land in rural areas.

H.E William Ruto added:

“This technology will help us understand month by month how our land is being used so that we can target interventions aimed at improving our actions against climate change, help smallholder farmers and secure sustainable food and water for our citizens”

Although satellite data has existed for many years, the recent growth in its availability and ease of use has provided governments with a new tool to meet key development challenges.

Vast quantities of freely available satellite data offers a key opportunity to improve agricultural production, food security and access to water.

Our sister community, Aid & International Development Forum, is hosting its inaugural Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Summit on 15-16th May 2018 in Nairobi, Kenya. The summit will discuss innovations and challenges in Climate Smart Agriculture practices, increasing cross industry collaboration and financial investment for Climate Smart Agriculture and more.

Know an innovative project that hopes to establish or further Climate Smart Agriculture initiatives? Nominate it for our CSA Project of the Year Award.

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